Commenter Curly Haired Boy rages against retailer-exclusive bonus items in today's installment of Speak-Up on Kotaku.
What's the deal with retailer-exclusive bonus items? Fans hate missing out on them, they create more work for developers, and then the market awareness of a title just gets increasingly muddled.
The completionist in me gets incredibly annoyed when, no matter WHERE I buy a game, I'm missing out on some quasi-useful item. The only way to get a complete game these days is to buy a copy from every retailer that sells it. That's a massive waste of money for some in-game trinket.
Developers know it's a load of crap, too. But increasingly, retailers are reluctant to stock a game if they don't have something they can advertise that no other seller offers.
The worst part? It's spreading to all sorts of other products, from Walmart-exclusive bonus DVDs to Best Buy-exclusive special edition CDs to freakin' Target-exclusive Nerf guns.
It's a policy that's great for retailers, but enormously aggravating to customers. I miss the days when stores built loyalty through reputation and service for ALL products, instead of cheap granular bonuses on individual items.
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